NORTH CAROLINA
Bill advances to force ‘forever chemicals’ makers to pay for water systems fixes
BY GARY D. ROBERTSON ASSOCIATED PRESS RALEIGH, N.C. | North Carolina’s top environmental regulator could order manufacturers of “forever chemicals” to help pay for water system cleanup upgrades whenever they are found responsible for discharges that contaminate drinking water beyond acceptable levels, under legislation advanced by a state House committee.
The measure was sought by Republican lawmakers from the Wilmington area, where upstream discharges into the Cape Fear River of a kind of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — also called PFAS — have contributed to public utilities serving hundreds of thousands of people to spend large amounts to filter them out. Accumulating scientific evidence suggests such chemicals, which resist breaking down, can cause harm to humans.
One bill sponsor said it’s appropriate for companies that produced such chemicals and released them into the environment to cover the costs for cleaning up the water.
“It is not fair for the ratepayers to have to pay this bill while the people who are actually responsible for making this stuff from scratch that got into those utilities aren’t having to foot the bill,” state Rep. Ted Davis of New Hanover County told the House Environment Committee. The panel approved the measure with bipartisan support.
The bill, if ultimately enacted, certainly would threaten more costs for The Chemours Co., which a state investigation found had discharged for decades a type of PFAS from its Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County, reaching the air, the river and groundwater. The discharges weren’t made widely public until 2017.
The bill would authorize the state Department of Environmental Quality secretary to order a “responsible party” for PFAS contamination that exceed set maximum levels in drinking water to pay public water systems the “actual and necessary costs” they incurred to remove or correct the contamination. Only a PFAS manufacturer can be a “responsible party.”
The legislation also would make clear that a public water system that receives reimbursements must lower customer water rates if they were raised to pay for abatement efforts.
PFAS chemicals have been produced for a number of purposes — they helped eggs slide across nonstick frying pans, ensured that firefighting foam suffocates flames and helped clothes withstand the rain and keep people dry. GenX — produced at the Bladen plant — is associated with nonstick coatings.
Mr. Davis pushed unsuccessfully in 2022 for a similar bill, which at the time also ordered state regulators to set maximum acceptable levels of “forever chemicals.” The latest measure leaves that out, and sets the standards for action based on new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “maximum contaminant levels” for six PFAS types in drinking water, including GenX.
A Chemours lobbyist told the committee that the company was being targeted by the bill, even as the company has taken actions to address the PFAS release.
Chemours has invested at the plant to keep the chemical from entering the groundwater through an underwater wall and the air through a thermal oxidizer, lobbyist Jeff Fritz said, and it’s worked closely with state environmental regulators to address past contamination.
“Given those actions, we respectfully ask that this bill not proceed,” Mr. Fritz said. The company has been required to provide water filtration systems for homes with contaminated wells, for example.
The North Carolina Manufacturers Alliance opposes the bill, while the American Chemistry Council expressed concerns about details, their representatives said. They pointed to how the measure would apply retroactively to expenses incurred since early 2017, based on contamination standards that were just established in April.
